The Last of Us - Gaming's Greatest Story

If you haven't played The Last of Us and don't want any spoilers, this is not the post for you. Call in to work, send your family off to a friend's, and spend the next few days playing it, then come back.

For the rest of you, let's talk about the best story I've ever experienced.

In a nutshell, The Last of Us is a post-apocalyptic story that will feel familiar to most people. There's a plague, humanity is basically wiped out, and governments around the world are all but helpless to do anything about it. Society crumbles, people break up in to tightly-knit groups (sometimes consisting of just two people), and there's a chance you'll die to other survivors before you die to whatever wiped out the world.

The Last of Us (TLoU) doesn't break new ground, but nothing about the story gives the feeling of "been there, done that." I really don't know how to handle talking about this story other than to just recap everything about it that I loved and then try to reason through the amazing ending. This also doubles as my way of talking my wife's ear off about the game because I know she's reading this instead of working.

The game starts off just hours before it hits the fan. We see Joel, and working man in his early 30s, coming home from work late at night. His teen daughter Sarah is waiting up for him, and we get a very sweet exchange between the two of them. They're obviously close, and TLoE shows it in a very natural way. That's one thing that will be persistent through the game's story - nothing feels forced. All emotion, all character relationships and reactions, seem like they could exist in reality.

Sarah falls asleep while watching TV with her dad, despite protesting she wasn't tired just minutes ago. Joel picks her up, puts her in her bed, and we say goodbye to any sense of normalcy in the world. Sarah is later woken up to a strange noise and goes searching for her dad. When she gets downstairs, Joel finally bursts through their open back door, panicked and saying something about the neighbors. Despite knowing what was coming, I jumped as a psychotic human figure burst through the door, clearly ready to kill. Joel quickly grabs a handgun and puts him down, shocking us because this was the guy's neighbor. We don't really know what happened before this, but Joel didn't hesitate to kill to keep his daughter safe. No questions asked. That's key to Joel's character.

Joel's brother finally shows up and everyone hops in the truck and tries to escape the city. It's chaos, with fires, dead bodies, and terror everywhere. The city's exits are jammed, so the three try finding an alternate route. As they're driving, Joel's brother Tommy wants to pick up a family on the road - Joel tells him to just keep driving, insisting someone else will help them. At this point Tommy seems to be the hero here, but Joel's reaction is so believable that we just have to accept it.

Things turn sour and the group finds themselves trying to escape on foot through a city that looks like a warzone. They finally reach the outskirts of town with Joel carrying Sarah who broke her leg during their escape. They start getting chased by the crazy people, but are saved by a soldier in a gas mask. Joel tries to explain their situation, but the guard ignores him while asking what to do over his radio. My stomach sank as the guard replied "Sir there's a little girl. But... yes sir." Joel heard it too but wasn't fast enough before the guard started opening fire.

He throws Sarah and himself to safety, and before he can finish them off Tommy catches up to them and puts a bullet in to the soldier. Joel is fine, but Sarah isn't so lucky. Joel looks to see her clutching a fatal stomach wound, and we witness a heartbreaking scene as a father watches his daughter die. Seriously, if you want to cry just watch her death scene below.



Cut to 20 years later, and things haven't gotten better. We learn that the infection has been caused by a mutated fungus known as Cordyceps. In nature it will infect the brain of its host, causing erratic or violent behaviour before killing it. When the host dies a fungal stalk will sprout from the host's skull. In TLoU, this fungus does the very same thing. In a day or two the fungus takes root in the brain and its host will lose control of itself, turning violent and erratic. After being "infected" long enough a hard carapace will grow over its host's head, stealing its eyesight but allowing it to track its surroundings with a combination of clicking and sonar hearing. The carapace armor continues to grow on the host, eventually giving it something akin to armor. Infection is spread in two ways - through saliva (a la zombies), or through spores released when the fungus finally kills its host.

The west coast has been divided in to two main camps - the military and Fireflies. The military has set up Quarantine Zones and has developed a way to discover infected people, who are shot immediately. Fireflies are fighting to restore civilization, searching for a cure when the military gave up on it. The Fireflies are painted as terrorists, but they claim to stand for freedom.

In this world Joel has become a hard man who has turned to smuggling to stay alive. He is accompanied by his only friend, Tess. After a short mission that shows how brutal and not-above-torture they are, we get to the main story. Joel and Tess find a severely injured woman by the name of Marlene, who is revealed to be the head of the Fireflies. In exchange for a cache of weapons, Marlene asks them to smuggle a 14 year old girl out of the city to meet up with some Fireflies waiting to take her to their headquarters. They reluctantly agree and leave Marlene to her fate while they escort young Ellie.

After dodging several military patrols, they are finally caught in a restricted area. Two soldiers administer a blood test, but as soon as they take blood from Ellie she spins around and knifes a soldier to death. Fearing for their lives, the group kills the soldiers without a second thought. Tess is shocked when she sees the result of Ellie's blood test - positive for infection. Before Joel can put her down, Ellie quickly rolls up her sleeve and shows a closed wound that she confirms is a bite mark, except it's three weeks old. Joel refuses to believe it, but Tess is optimistic. Ellie confesses that Marlene was getting her to the Fireflies so they could study Ellie's immunity and try to reverse engineer a cure for the infection.

The two agree to carry out their mission and go to meet up with the Fireflies escort. Unfortunately the Fireflies who were waiting for them have been killed, and the military is just moments behind them. Tess reveals that she was bitten by some infected they had just fought off, and she refuses to become one of them. She stands courageously as Joel and Ellie escape, and in the resulting fire fight Tess is able to take down two heavily-armed guards before finally being gunned down herself. I've never care much for secondary characters in a game, but Tess was crafted so well in such a brief time that I felt my heart strings being tugged by her sacrifice.

They make their way out to find Joel's brother Tommy, who had fallen in with the Fireflies when the two of them finally parted ways. The game never backtracks, instead sending you on a straight path through each area. I met a few allies (both normal and insane), saw how much the world had crumbled, and read through the journals of other survivors who chronicled some of their experiences. Never did I feel like I was just wasting time - everything in the game unlocked more of the world through the eyes of others, the set pieces gave scope to how bad the world was, and Ellie showed herself to be an amazing character.

Not only did she have a sense of believable innocence, but she wasn't a victim. One time I was about to be killed by a "clicker" after my 2x4 broke, and suddenly I hear Ellie yell something and see a glass bottle explode across the clicker's head, stunning it long enough for me to draw a shank and drive it through its neck. Ellie is like no AI character I've seen. She can never be damaged unless it's scripted, so she never becomes a burden that I have to babysit. She isn't an annoying kid, which is a huge relief because while I love kids, I hate how they're portrayed in games and movies. And finally, I was thankful for her in and out of combat. She shot people, threw bottles and bricks, pointed out where I should go next, and made me feel less alone in such an amazingly grim world.

When we finally meet up with Tommy, Joel is still a bit closed off from Ellie. He never says it, but we know that he can't afford to lose another Sarah. It's obvious he cares for Ellie, she cares for him, and it scares the crap out of Joel. Tommy has gotten out of the Fireflies and has instead set up a small, self-sustained community near a hydro-electric dam. Tommy tells Joel that the Fireflies are holed up in a nearby university, and Joel begs Tommy to take Ellie there himself. Joel has let Sarah and Tess die, and he subtly tells Tommy (and us) that Ellie isn't safe with him. This character progression of Joel is so profound that I wanted to hug him!

After a bandit raid on Tommy's town is the only thing in the game I didn't like - Ellie takes a horse and runs away after learning that Joel was going to send her with Tommy. That's the kind of kid stuff I hate, and it felt a bit out of character for such a tough girl who wanted to stay alive and help the Fireflies. Ellie runs away to a house where a teen girl used to live, and after reading her diary asks "Is this what girls used to worry about? Boys? Which skirt goes with which skirt?" Awesome.

After fending off some more bandits, we get one of my favorite scenes in the entire game. I'd encourage you to watch the scene yourself (it starts about about 4:05), but basically Ellie and Tommy have resigned to part ways with Joel. Instead Joel tells Ellie to give her horse back to Tommy, and in that statement says that Ellie is his to protect, and he's not leaving her. The music combined with the voice acting and script just gives me warm fuzzies every time I watch it!



Surprise! The Fireflies have abandoned their research lab at the university in Colorado and have headed to Salt Lake City. I suck at geography, but the game implies it's quite a way on horseback. After discovering the reason why they left (it involved the lead scientist getting bitten by an infected monkey), they look out to see a bunch of looters pulling up. Joel and Ellie fight their way out, but on the way Joel and another looter take a nasty fall that ends with Joel getting a piece of rebar through his gut. Ellie pulls him up and yells at him to keep going, but fighting their way out sees Joel losing more blood.

Watching Ellie take the reins in the fight was glorious, moreso because I was still controlling a wounded Joel the entire time. They finally make it to the horse, and the scene cuts to them walking at a slower pace. It cuts to Joel looking deathly white, and it ends with him falling off the horse and hitting the ground in an unconcious heap. After all Joel had lived through, I really wasn't sure if he could survive something like that. I don't know how long the rebar was there, but I'm willing to bet it hadn't been sanitized in years.

Cut to a black screen that said "Winter," and open to find Ellie hunting in a snowy forest. She nails a rabbit and comments that it won't last long. After tying it to her horse, she starts hunting down an elk in the distance. She tracks the wounded animal to an empty town and is met by two men who are surprisingly nice. They propose a trade, and she is very insistent on antibiotics. The leader of the two stays with Ellie, who keeps a gun pointed at him the entire time. While waiting for the other man to return, they take shelter in a building which is soon attacked by the infected.

They survive a pretty harrowing series of attacks that shows Ellie's bravery despite all odds, and ends with a very chilling scene. The man, David, talks about how he believes things are meant to be. To paraphrase,  "For example, I sent my boys out to a nearby town to scavenge for supplies. The few who returned tell me the rest were butchered by a crazy man... and a little girl. See? Meant to be." The man returns with the medicine and a gun pulled on Ellie. The leader, in the nicest voice ever, says to give her the medicine and let her go. I was dumbfounded - the guy was so nice, but no one is nice in a fungal zombie apocalypse!

And I was right. After Ellie gets to the house where she was keeping Joel and gives him a big dose of antibiotics, she late wakes up to hear voices outside. David had followed her, wanting revenge for the men he and his town had lost. Ellie sets out to lead them away from Joel, but is eventually caught.

She wakes up in a jail cell to see a human corpse being butchered on a nearby table. David shows up and calmly tries to get her to cooperate, asking for her name and seems to imply that the town could use her for baby-making. It's worth noting that I don't think this was some mindless sex thing, but a genuine concern for his town's growth. Despite David's questionable character, he does seem to be a nice guy in his own weird way, and doesn't even try anything unsavory when he comes back the next day to chop her up for food. The whole prison scene is awesome to watch, and gives a lot of insight in to Ellie, and makes David one of those guys who's just as much of a monster as anyone else trying to survive, including Ellie and Joel. I think David's speech about "killing to survive.,.. protecting our own" perfectly epitomizes everything that happens in the game.

Watch the scene, including Ellie's hilarious way of finally giving up her name [language warning].



Joel soon wakes up because penicillin apparently fixes a weeks-long stomach wound (and probably infection) in a single large dose. I have no idea if it's true, but it meant I could move at a regular speed so whatever. While Joel is killing his way through town, we regain control of Ellie who manages to escape the butcher's table and tries to get away from a very angry David. Her scene ends with a "hunting the hunter" situation in a burning diner, with Ellie showing that she's will kill to survive - proving David's point from the previous video. The fight finally concluded with Ellie sitting on David's chest, mercilessly chopping at his head until Joel finally arrives and pulls her off.

Again, this was just a detour to the game's main point, but I left it with so much love for Ellie's character. She was tough, she never succumbed to fear, and she was a true survivor. She managed to haul a grown man around for weeks, keeping him safe and alive with no idea how she would save him. This is another one of those things that's been done before in games or movies, but it felt so real that I felt like I'd never seen anything quite like it.

And now, finally, they reach Salt Lake City. The place looked like a recreation of I Am Legend, complete with freaking giraffes eating some plants growing in a room while Ellie and Joel stood right there. It was so random, but it was the first peaceful moment the game has had since Sarah fell asleep on the couch. The surrealism of the scene was a great build up to the game's end. As they start making their way to the hospital they find themselves in an infected-infested tunnel system. After I made the world burn with molotovs and a flamethrower (seriously, I was done fighting fair with clickers and the super-fungus-armor jerks), Ellie and Joel tried making their way over some rapids that had broken through the tunnel. They both get sucked under, and Joel is too late to save Ellie, who can't swim.

He finally hauls her out of the water and tries reviving her, but is knocked unconscious by a soldier. He wakes up to Marlene, the woman who had originally sent Ellie with him, healthy and smiling. She assures Joel that Ellie is safe, but things go badly when he immediately asks to see her. Marlene explains that they figured out why Ellie was immune. The fungus that usually takes over the host's brain had mutated; it was still rooted in her brain, but it was mutated to the point that Ellie was "infected" without changing. It explained why she could get bitten or walk through a cloud of infectious spores. She wasn't special, her infection was.

I really liked this take on the "savior of mankind," since it's always someone's blood that's special. However, I didn't like what followed. Ellie was being prepped for surgery - they needed to study her brain and the fungus post mortem, meaning Ellie had to die to save the world. Ellie, the girl Joel was willing to die for, whom he'd adopted as his own daughter, was going to die because Joel brought her here. That couldn't happen.

Joel killed the guard escorting him out of the building and went on a rampage through the hospital. Up to this point I never felt like I was controlling an action hero. I was always susceptible to death from a single infected, making me play smart and calm. But at this point, the game let you feel in control. Joel wasn't going to let these monsters hurt Ellie, and I think at least 15 people died because they were standing between him and Ellie.

When I finally get to the operating room, and I see Ellie knocked out on the table and surrounded by doctors, Joel (and I, to a degree) lost it. There was no emotion to any of this. Everything the Fireflies were doing was cold and scientific. A doctor in the room grabbed a weapon and acted like he was going to defend himself, but Joel gunned down everyone in that room, grabbed Ellie, and bolted for the exit.

I wanted to cry at this point. Joel was a desperate man, with this unconscious girl in his arms that he was going to protect at all costs. Everywhere I turned guards were following me, keeping a safe distance and unwilling to shoot because I was carrying "the cure" in my arms.

Joel finally finds an elevator and heads to the parking garage, only to be greeted by Marlene. She tries to reason with him - she had known Ellie since she was a little girl, and it was hard for her too. Journal entries spread throughout the hospital show more in to Marlene's own struggle, and she fully understood Joel's position. Ellie was a light for the world - a promise that an end was possible, and that humans could fight their own extinction. She also says the most honest thing she could - that this is what Ellie would want.

However, I believe that Joel sees Ellie as his salvation - as someone who revived something that died with him as Sarah took her last breaths in his arms. Without thought, without remorse, Joel shoots Marlene. As she lies there bleeding out, she begs Joel to let her go. "You'd just come after her," and pulls the trigger one last time. Joel puts Ellie in the car and drives away from what could be humanity's only chance of survival.

As Ellie wakes up, Joel does something I couldn't believe. He tells her that they didn't need her after all. "There are others like you, dozens in fact. It didn't work. They've stopped looking for a cure." I was floored. I knew Joel loved her, and she was so similar to Sarah that he couldn't lose a daughter twice. She wasn't a replacement, of course, but Joel knew that Ellie's death would end him. But here he tells the player, flat out, that this wasn't some noble decision. It wasn't about them being monsters, it was about Joel looking out for his own. Killing the world to protect Ellie.

The game ends with Joel and Ellie walking through the woods. Joel comments that Ellie and Sarah would have been good friends, and Joel jokingly says he's feeling his age. It's a very sweet, unbelievably simple scene. These two have spent a year fighting death, and they were getting a happy ending.

But then Ellie, who went from drowning, to being unconscious, to being kept asleep by anesthesia, doesn't feel right about it. She tells him that she wasn't the only one bitten, that she'd seen her Riley die while she lived. Without saying it, she confirms Marlene's words - Ellie would have happily died to save others from having to suffer.

"Swear to me, swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true." She begs him, knowing that Joel, the only lasting thing in her life, would never lie to her.

"I swear," he replies, knowing that the truth of what he'd done would kill her. She was almost destroyed by what had happened with David, and knowing that the world is condemned so she could live, through no choice of her own, would be too much for this 14 year old to handle.

Pause.

Ellie nods.

"Okay."

Credits

WHAT?!

Here's the ending, starting with Joel pulling her off the table. The actual video part is 8 minutes long, with the rest being credits. If you haven't played the game, this is the one scene I insist you watch.



I went in to this game knowing that it was amazing. The reviews said so, everyone who owned a PS3 said so... I knew it was going to rock my world. To me, that means that Joel or Ellie sacrifices themselves. Somehow, the game will make me glad I have tissues nearby because it's going to break my heart. I was sure that despite his flawed character, Joel would be a hero in the end.

But he's not a hero, he's not an antihero, he's not even a villain. He's the most realistic character I've ever seen. He looked out for his own and made the hard choice to keep Ellie safe. At first I thought this was just him being selfish because he couldn't live without her. After watching that final scene with Marlene again, I picked up on something key.

"You'd just come after her."

Her, not us. Everything Joel did was for Ellie, not him. He would have died to keep her alive. He knew that pulling her from that operating table meant the world would die, but it also meant Ellie would live. It's such a complex decision that I still haven't come to grips with it. Is Joel selfish? My first reaction was to say yes. But if I'd gone through all that, if I'd lost a daughter and could prevent losing a second one... I don't know if I could be responsible for delivering her to be killed.

Dying on the journey would have been one thing. Joel would have fought to the death to protect her then. But to roll over, to say "Yes, kill her. It's the right thing to do." I don't know that I can guarantee I'd do things differently. Their relationship was real, and because of that it was relatable. Ellie was someone worth caring about, even as a player, and watching Joel make that choice was both relieving and hard to swallow.

What a story. I hate Joel, but I understand him at the same time. His decision can be rationalized, especially since the military already failed at their cure attempts. However, I think that cheapens the weight of what he did. He didn't weigh the risks or reason his way through it. Ellie was in danger, and that's all he needed to make a decision.  She wasn't just someone he had to protect, she was someone he loved like she was his own. She was his own, and he had to protect that.


See you tomorrow

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